November 7th, 2024
Written by: Kerri-Ann H.
21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. 26 It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
If you
live long enough, you will eventually find yourself living in what could be
described as a season of sorrow. It takes different shapes for different
people. For some, it may be a prolonged season of illness, while for others it
may be years of financial hardship, or dealing with a child’s struggle with
addiction and promiscuity, or navigating the pain of betrayal, or feeling
trapped in a hostile environment, or living with the wounds of a broken
relationship, and the list goes on inexhaustibly. The common thread in each
person’s story is the walk through the valley of pain that requires more
strength than any one of us is able to muster up on our own. It is in these
seasons that we, like the author of Lamentations, must look to God for hope.
The
Book of Lamentations, like the name suggests, is a collection of laments written
after the destruction of Judah by Babylon. It’s like a hymnal in which every
song is one of grief and sorrow, like the kind you would sing at a funeral or
wake. For this reason, many Christians often skip this book of the Bible
altogether. It’s a bit of a downer, so it doesn’t rank highly on many people’s
favourite Bible study reading list. Yet, like the rest of Scripture, it is
filled with theological meatiness and substance to instruct and encourage us in
our faith, especially in times of trouble.
It is no surprise then that when we start reading Lamentations 3, we are immediately immersed in a chorus of woe and sorrow. In fact, the author spends the first 20 verses telling us of his personal afflictions. He bares his heart and soul to his readers as he details for us what he’s been going through at the hands of God. He describes his situation as him being “driven into darkness without any light” (v. 2); he says he has been “besieged and enveloped with bitterness and tribulation” (v. 5); so much so, he has forgotten what happiness is (v. 17). It sounds depressing, yet as I read it, I am struck by a chord of familiarity. I find within his lament echoes of the pain I’ve felt in my own heart.
Thankfully,
the chapter doesn’t end there, because after taking us through 20 verses of sorrow
and after naming God as the source of his grievous affliction, the author writes
these words: “Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this…”
(NLT). What
does he remember? What one
thing could override the abject darkness of his situation? He
spends the rest of the chapter telling us. He says, “The faithful love of
the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his
faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I
say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in
him!” (vv. 22–24). What a jubilant realization! It is the character of God that
he remembers, and it is enough to bring hope to a hopeless situation.
It is for this reason the Bible instructs us to feed on the Word of God as food for life (Deuteronomy 8:3), because it is only in truly knowing the character of God that we can find hope and strength to walk through every season of our lives. When we know who God is—who He has revealed Himself to be, who He has declared Himself to be in His Word—then we, too, can preach to our souls about the unfailing goodness of God and find hope in the fact that His mercies towards us never cease despite how dreadful our circumstances may seem. And when we allow His truth to calm our anxieties, verse 26 tells us that our next course of action is to wait: “It is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord” for “though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love” (v. 32).
And so we learn that seasons of despair are not truly
seasons of despair at all, because we are never without hope. God himself is
our hope. He Himself is our joy. The Almighty One Himself is our strength, and
He is “good to those who depend on him” (v. 25).